The Tales of Beedle the Bard

To hurt is as human as to breathe.

No man or woman alive, magical or not, has ever escaped some form of injury, whether physical, mental, or emotional. To hurt is as human as to breathe.

Clever as I am, I remain just as big a fool as anyone else.

No witch has ever claimed to own the Elder Wand. Make of that what you will.

Death comes for us all in the end.

Magic causes as much trouble as it cures.

Children being children, however, the grotesque Hopping Pot had taken hold of their imaginations. The solution was to jettison the pro-Muggle moral but keep the warty cauldron, so by the middle of the sixteenth century a different version of the tale was in wide circulation among wizarding families. In the revised story, the Hopping Pot protects an innocent wizard from his torch-bearing, pitchfork-toting neighbours by chasing them away from the wizard's cottage, catching them and swallowing them whole.

This exchange marked the beginning of Mr. Malfoy's long campaign to have me removed from my post as headmaster of Hogwarts, and of mine to have him removed from his position as Lord Voldemort's Favorite Death Eater. My response prompted several further letters from Mr. Malfoy, but as they consisted mainly of opprobrious remarks on my sanity, parentage, and hygiene, their relevance to this commentary is remote.

What must strike any intelligent witch or wizard on studying the so-called history of the Elder Wand is that every man who claims to have owned it has insisted that it is "unbeatable," when the known facts of its passage through many owners' hands demonstrate that has it not only been beaten hundreds of times, but that it also attracts trouble as Grumble the Grubby Goat attracted flies.

The heroes and heroines who triumph in his stories are not those with the most powerful magic, but rather those who demonstrate the most kindness, common sense and ingenuity.

And sure enough, in seeking to become superhuman this foolhardy young man renders himself inhuman. The heart that he has locked away slowly shrivels and grows hair, symbolising his own descent to beasthood.

As the sun fell below the horizon, Sir Luckless emerged from the waters with the glory of his triumph upon him, and flung himself in his rusted armor at the feet of Amata, who was the kindest and most beautiful woman he had ever beheld. Flushed with success, he begged for her hand and her heart, and Amata, no less delighted, realized that she had found a man worthy of them.

Powerful infatuations can be induced by the skilful potioneer, but never yet has anyone managed to create the truly unbreakable, eternal, unconditional attachment that alone can be called Love

Humans have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them.

My refusal to remove the book from the library was backed by a majority of the Board of Governors. I wrote back to Mr Malfoy, explaining my decision: So-called pure-blood families maintain their alleged purity by disowning, banishing or lying about Muggles or Muggle-borns on their family trees. They then attempt to foist their hypocrisy upon the rest of us by asking us to ban works dealing with the truths they deny. There is not a witch or wizard in existence whose blood has not mingled with that of Muggles, and I should therefore consider it both illogical and immoral to remove works dealing with the subject from our students' store of knowledge.(4) This exchange marked the beginning of Mr Malfoy's long campaign to have me removed from my post as Headmaster of Hogwarts, and of mine to have him removed from his position as Lord Voldemort's Favourite Death Eater. (4)My response prompted several further letters from Mr Malfoy, but as they consisted mainly of opprobrious remarks on my sanity, parentage and hygiene, their relevance to this commentary is remote.

Another notable difference between these fables and their Muggle counterparts is that Beedle’s witches are much more active in seeking their fortunes than our fairy-tale heroines. Asha, Altheda, Amata and Babbitty Rabbitty are all witches who take their fate into their own hands, rather than taking a prolonged nap or waiting for someone to return a lost shoe.

Y entonces recibió a la Muerte como si fuera una vieja amiga, y se marchó con ella de buen grado. Y así, como iguales, ambos se alejaron de la vida.

humans have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them. But

A simple and heart-warming fable, one might think - in which case, one would reveal oneself to be an innocent nincompoop.

To hurt is as human as breathe.

magic causes as much trouble as it cures. Another

The kindest interpretation would be: 'Hope springs eternal.

It is a beautiful and terrible thing, and should therefore be treated with great caution.” Whether

the bond between parent and child is the root from which all success, all well-being, grows. Although

El corazón que ha encerrado se marchita lentamente y le crece pelo, lo que simboliza su propio descenso a la animalidad. Al final queda reducido a una bestia violenta que obtiene lo que quiere por la fuerza, y muere en un vano intento de recuperar lo que ya está fuera de su alcance para siempre: un corazón humano.